How to Measure Brand Awareness? 8 Easy Tactics

Is measuring brand awareness your KPI? You’re in the right place. Even though it might seem tricky, measuring your brand awareness efforts is possible. Keep reading to learn more!

We can not build robust brand recognition in a month. It is a long-term process. And it is worth tracking the progress to learn what’s working and what is a waste of time.

But which metrics should you focus on? What is important?

In this article, you will find tips on how to monitor brand awareness effectively.

8 easy tactics to measure brand awareness:

• Keep an eye on your website traffic
• Monitor your brand online
• Pay attention to brand name search trends
• Conduct brand awareness surveys
• Observe Google Trends data
• Track conversions
• Monitor content marketing performance
• Track backlinks to your website

01 Keep an eye on your website traffic

Observe direct traffic

Direct traffic refers to site visitors who either found your site by entering your website address directly into the search bar, have your site bookmarked in their browser, or landed on your website by clicking on links that are not tracked, i.e., e-mail marketing.

If users are able to enter your URL directly into any browser address bar, this indicates that your brand has a good brand recall, which is a significant part of measuring brand awareness.

Observe referral traffic

Referral traffic refers to site visitors who come from direct links on other sites. When an external website provides a link to your website in their content, and a visitor clicks on it and is taken to your site, this visitor will be counted as Referral Traffic in Google Analytics.

Keep an eye on your website traffic over time.

Once you increase your direct traffic and referrals, it would be much easier to come up in Google’s search results.

An increase in direct traffic indicates growth in brand recall – people don’t enter URLs directly into their address bars unless they know where it’s taking them.

An increase in referral traffic indicates growth in the number of external web pages that are linking back to your website. This is good for SEO and tells you where your website visitors are coming from.

02 Monitor your brand online

Measuring awareness relies on what your existing and potential customers are saying about your brand. That’s why a social media listening tool is enormously helpful when it comes to measuring brand awareness.

Here are the right brand awareness metrics worth tracking:

• The volume of mentions
• Engagement levels
• Social media reach
• The sentiment of conversations
• The share of voice

The volume of mentions

Whenever users that are not affiliated with – or sponsored by – your brand, mention you online, they produce user-generated content; this is earned media.

Unlike paid media (sponsored sources, such as influencers on social media platforms that you’ve recruited for Instagram influencer marketing) or owned media (like your company blog), earned media is free and an important way to measure awareness. People can only talk about your brand if they’re aware of it.

The greater the amount of earned media you receive, the greater your general level of brand awareness.

Engagement levels

Social media engagement is measured by the number of interactions for online mentions of your brand. This includes likes, shares, and comments that these posts have received.

Track levels of interaction for posts that mention your brand name and compare them with dates of surges in buzz for your brand. There may be a particular product or aspect of your branding that is not only increasing your brand awareness but also a driving force in sales.

Like this post about new chocolate covered potato chips from Lay’s, which has gotten a significant amount of engagement.

Social media reach

Measuring social media reach gives you an idea of the number of times a post that mentions your brand could have been viewed. Social media reach is different from your volume of mentions because it measures the number of views for mentions of your brand, as opposed to the number of mentions themselves.

The sentiment of conversations

Measuring brand awareness tells you about your brand recall and brand recognition. But your brand can be recognized and recalled for either good reasons or bad reasons.

One of the top indicators of brand awareness is measured by the number of times your brand comes up in conversation. Take this even further by evaluating the sentiment of these conversations. Do people associate your brand with positive emotions or negative emotions?

Analyze the context of these conversations to find out if there is something specific that people like or dislike about your brand. Fans of the brand JĀSÖN seem to appreciate the health-conscious selection of products they offer.

The share of voice

The share of voice is one of the most important metrics when it comes to measuring the results of a PR campaign.

The share of voice is also indispensable when it comes to brand awareness measurement.

This metric will indicate what percentage of the whole online discussion was initiated by your social media profile.

You can calculate the share of voice by yourself. To do that, track the total number of mentions for your competitors and your brand and calculate the percentage of the share of voice about your brand.

Or, to make the whole process easier, take a look at the brand tracking software dashboard. Brand24 automatically calculates the share of voice and presents the data inside the Analysis tab.

03 Pay attention to brand name search trends

Your branded search volume data tells you how often people search for your brand.

Tools like SemRush and Ahrefs help you optimize SEO and check the monthly search volume for your brand.

Here you can see the search volume of Pepsi detected by Semrush. The tool also presents search trends. It’s worth paying attention to whether the trend is rising or decreasing.

Knowing how often people search for your brand tells you how good your brand recall is. This is tricky if your brand name is really generic, like Dove.

Social listening helps you work around this problem by creating more refined searches. So you can exclude results about the gorgeous Dove Cameron, actual flying doves, and (The Artist Formerly Known As) Prince’s hit song when you’re measuring awareness for a brand with a generic name, like Dove.

04 Conduct a brand awareness survey

Working with focus groups and conducting your own brand awareness survey. Survey random selections of people and see if they have ever heard of your brand and whether they can identify or recognize it.

It’s also a good idea to reach out to your customers directly, whether it’s via e-mail, online surveys, over the phone, face-to-face, or on your website. Ask them how they heard about you.

Customer surveys will give insight into your levels of brand recall and recognition among clients and tell you how people heard about you.

05 Observe Google Trends data

How to measure brand awareness for free? Using the Google Trends tool is a great way to do that. Tracking the number of searches for a particular term over time makes it possible to get a sense of how well-known a brand is.

For example, if we track the number of searches for “Nike” over time, we can see that there is a clear spike in searches during key moments such as the release of new products or major sporting events. This data can be used to measure the success of brand awareness campaigns.

Additionally, you can use Google Trends to compare the relative popularity of different brands. This can be useful for understanding which brands are most successful in specific markets or regions.

06 Track conversions

Let’s be honest Marketers want the target group to perform actions. That’s why they create brand awareness campaigns.

How to evaluate the success of such a campaign?

It’s definitely worth tracking conversions. This involves measuring how often people who see your brand message take the desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

By tracking conversions, you can clearly understand how well your brand message resonates with your target audience. You can use this information to adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.

So if you’re looking for an effective way to measure brand awareness efforts, don’t forget to track conversions and goals.

07 Monitor content marketing performance

Running a content marketing campaign is (still) one of the best ways to reach a wide target group. It’s a big part of our marketing strategy at Brand24.

We maintain our website and blog to organically reach a large number of Google search engine users. So they can become familiar with our media monitoring tool and brand image.

Monitoring content marketing will help you to understand whether or not it actually increases your brand recognition.

What is worth tracking?

• Position of strategic keywords
• Online visibility
• Average position
• Cannibalization health

High online visibility and average position will raise brand awareness. That’s because your content will perform well in SERPs and reach a new audience.

08 Track backlinks to your website

If your website has a solid number of referring backlinks, it’s a reliable content source. You might be an authority within your industry and run a page where people look for certain pieces of information.

The lack of backlinks to your website is an indicator of several problems. The content you offer might not meet the needs of the target audience. Every company wants to be seen as a reliable business leader. Providing your customers with pieces of content they find useful will make measuring brand awareness easier.

Here’s how you can monitor backlinks profile using the Ahrefs tool:

The benefits of measuring brand awareness

Measuring brand awareness is essential for any business that wants to gauge the success of its marketing efforts.

There are many reasons why it is worth measuring brand awareness levels. You will be able to:

• Learn how well your brand awareness campaigns are performing,
• Track customer satisfaction,
• Assess customer loyalty,
• Reach your target audience faster,
• Identify potential new customers,
• Evaluate marketing campaigns and strategies,
• Build brand awareness based on reliable data,
• Identify weaknesses of brand awareness strategy,
• Find how to promote your content better,
• Observe how your community is growing.

Brand recognition is based on the customer’s ability to identify or tell a brand apart from others. This doesn’t necessarily mean that customers remember the name of the brand, but simply that they’re able to recognize it. It’s a major part of the customer journey.

Brand awareness plays a key role in the customer decision-making process. When faced with several brands, brand awareness makes certain choices a little more obvious than others. This helps consumers reach their purchase decisions (‘I want that one – the one with the red cap’).

How to measure brand awareness? Conclusion:

There are a variety of ways to measure different aspects of brand awareness. In this article, I’ve outlined popular tactics that should work for most marketing teams.

Which tactics should you pick?

It depends on your brand awareness strategies and goals.

To sum up, here are the key takeaways:

• First, you need to know your KPIs. Why do you want to build brand awareness? What are your marketing goals? Describe your strategy.
• Then match the tactics presented in this article to your goals.
• Finally, choose the right brand awareness metrics to track.
• No matter which metrics you choose, tracking them over time is important.
• Monitoring your brand online will help you track brand awareness in real time.
• Some great brand awareness tools will help you build, increase and measure brand awareness campaigns.

Want to measure brand awareness? Try the Brand24 tool!